1. Who We Are
  2. News
Events
DECRG Kuala Lumpur Seminar Series: A Global Headcount of Extreme Poverty
April 14, 2016DECRG Kuala Lumpur Seminar Series

Abstract: One of the main goals of the World Bank is to help bring an end to extreme poverty by 2030, understood as less than 3% of the world population living in extreme poverty by that time. This presentation is about how the Bank monitors progress towards this goal, and the assumptions and data inputs used to estimate global poverty.

In 2012, the latest reference year for the global count, we find that 897 million people (12.7 percent of the world’s population) are living in extreme poverty, defined as living on less than $1.90 per day. The presentation will include an explanation of how the new $1.90 international poverty line was established, along with a discussion of how incorporating the most recent purchasing power parity conversion factors (PPPs) from 2011 have changed the value of this line and our understanding of the profile of global poverty.

The discussion will also cover several methodological decisions taken in the process of updating both the poverty line and the consumption and income distributions at the country level, including issues of inter-temporal and spatial price adjustments. 

Download the papers:

A global count of the extreme poor in 2012

A Measured Approach to Ending Poverty and Boosting Shared Prosperity

  • Dean Mitchell Jolliffe

    Senior Economist in the Poverty and Inequality Team (DECPI)
    Dean Jolliffe is a senior economist in the Poverty and Inequality Team (DECPI) of the Development Research Group (DECRG) at the World Bank (WB). Previously, he worked in the South Asia region of the Bank, and prior to that he was with the Economic Research Service (ERS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Dean's research at ERS included work on obesity, rural poverty, and the effect of social safety nets on household welfare. At that time, he also was an adjunct professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) where he taught econometrics. He holds appointments as a Research Fellow with the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn, and as a Research Affiliate with the National Poverty Center (NPC) at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. Prior to ERS, Dean was an Assistant Professor at the Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education (CERGE) in Prague where he taught Public Economics (Ph.D. level) and Econometrics II (Ph.D. level). While in Prague he was also a Senior Researcher at the Economics Institute (EI) of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. Prior to CERGE, he worked as a consultant at the World Bank primarily on the Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) and as a post-doctoral fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). In addition to research activities, Dean has also been involved in the management and collection of household survey data from several different countries (Afghanistan, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Paraguay, Pakistan, Egypt, and Mozambique). Dean received his Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University in 1996. While finishing his degree, he taught Statistics and Applied Microeconomics (Masters level) as a lecturer at the Woodrow Wilson School of Princeton University. His fields of specialization include applied microeconometrics, development, transition, and public economics. His research focuses on topics related to poverty, inequality, education, household labor supply, and related measurement issues.
  • The DECRG Kuala Lumpur Seminar Series is hosted by the World Bank's Development Research Group (DECRG) based in the World Bank Malaysia office. The series invites leading researchers in development economics and public policy to present their recent work in an academic-style seminar format.
EVENT DETAILS
  • WHEN: Thursday, 14 April 2016; 12:30-2:00PM
  • WHERE: World Bank Malaysia Office, Level 3, Sasana Kijang, No. 2, Jalan Dato’ Onn
  • RSVP: Kindly RSVP to Ms. Stella Ambrose (msambrose@worldbank.org) and provide your name, Malaysian I/C no. or passport no., and affiliation by Wednesday, 13 April 2016.
RELATED
Welcome